12/17/2021 Photo credit: Valerie Kathawala Wines with a View at Winkler-Hermaden By Jill Barth The story of Weingut Winkler-Hermaden and its home in a striking 11th-century castle starts with a “small, tough” woman. That woman, Magdalene Helene, was current proprietor Georg Winkler-Hermaden’s grandmother. When he found her diary, which she kept from her arrival at the Schloss Kapfenstein in 1916 through WWII, he “began to read and couldn’t stop until the book was finished.” In 1916, Magdalene Helene came to the castle as a young woman to work as a maid. Just two years later, her employer died and…
Jill Barth is a writer focused on wine creators–with culture, community, ecology, and travel pivotal to the stories. She’s a columnist for Forbes and USA Today. Her work appears in Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, VinePair, Relais & Châteaux Instants Magazine, SevenFifty Daily, and more. She’s a Provence Wine Master through the Wine Scholar Guild and received a fellowship to the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers. She’s also a speaker, wine judge, and founder of l'occasion, an award-winning publication that honors the ways we drink, make, and contemplate wine.
When Italy’s Collio DOC voted in December 2024 to include orange wines in their disciplinare, the news barely caused a ripple in the grand lake that is global wine. Meanwhile, I was in a state of mild shock. One of Italy’s most conservative appellations had just voted to allow orange wines to bear its hallowed classification. The decision clearly made sense: Collio is ground zero when it comes to orange wine. It was here, after all, that seminal growers like Gravner and Radikon redefined skin-fermented white wines in the late 1990s. Once considered heretics, their approach is now established worldwide…....
As I peer out the window of a train from Hamburg, I understand why Sylt, sometimes referred to as “the Hamptons of Germany,” is such a popular destination for German vacationers. I can feel the tension of travel slipping away with the mainland as the tracks cross the shallow waters of the Wadden Sea and approach the sweeping, sandy landscape of this North Frisian island. Nils Lackner, a charismatic sommelier, tour guide, and regional expert based here, picks me up at the station, wondering how Sylt ended up on my radar since so few Americans are aware of it. I…...
Though its name suggests otherwise, Roter Veltliner isn’t a red wine grape at all. Yet at maturity the grapes do take on a scarlet hue. And this juxtaposition is precisely what captivated Austrian winemaker Toni Söllner: “Even as a child, I was fascinated by Roter Veltliner. The grapes were red, but the wine they made was colorless.” Söllner’s organic estate is in Wagram, Roter Veltliner’s home turf. He has restored 2.5 ha to the old autochthonous variety. Söllner is not alone in his engagement on behalf of the rarity, but rather is one of 10 Austrian organic growers who have…...
With its nearly ideal set of conditions — location, climate, indigenous varieties —Austria’s Thermenregion curiously remains an insider secret. In addition to a colorful mix of varieties common in Austria, this region just south of Vienna devotes 200 of its 2,200 hectares to the autochthonous grapes Rotgipfler and Zierfandler. They are the region’s great opportunity and are now back in growers’ sights, as illustrated by their well-deserved inclusion in the book 111 Weine aus Österreich, die man getrunken haben muss. Beyond this, some producers here are venturing into new areas, like pét-nat, while among red wines, Sankt Laurent and Pinot…...
